PSYCO104 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Demand Characteristics, Informed Consent, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

• School: University of Alberta
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCO104
• Professor: Geoff Hollis

Document Summary

Sometimes, mearly the expectation of recieving treatment can change how one feels or behaves. E. g. , depression/anxiety - the act of seeking treatment changes the nature/disposition of the problem. When doing drug research, it is important to compare against placebo to take away the confounders. In single blind experiments, participants are assigned to a treatment condition, but they do not know what that treatment condition is. Single blind experiments are common in medial settings when testing a new therapy or drug. Single blind experiments are used to allow researchers to separate the effects of an actual treatment from the effects of demand characteristics like placebo effects. In double-blind experiments, neither the participant nor the observer knows what type of treatment or experimental condition the participant is receiving. This helps reduce the effects of demand characteristics and observer bias. There was once a famous horse that could do basic arithmetic. Was actutally attending to subtle changes in behaviour and body language.